Known electronic chips which play music may now be made small and quite thin. These chips which employ a vibrating transducer ("transducer chips") as the sound emitting device have been placed, for example, in toys and greeting cards and have even been described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,163,447 as mountable in a condom. However, because the transducer plate serving as the sound emitting device in such a chip is not secured to any rigid support, the range of frequencies which can be simultaneously reproduced by these chips is extremely limited. Thus, although these chips can reproduce music, this music is generally characterized by a melody with only a single being played at a time. This limited frequency response makes these chips unsuitable for voice reproduction. Recorded words can be played by these chips but the limited frequency response results in a voice which sounds mechanical or robotic and from which the original speaker's voice is not recognizable.
Known chips capable of more accurately reproducing a human voice ("voice chips"), or other signal requiring an extended frequency range, are much larger than these transducer chips. This larger size is required to accommodate the more advanced speakers and the rigid supporting structure for the speakers of these voice chips.
Such voice chips have been placed in garments, but only in a manner which allows the chips to be removed when the garment is washed. These chips were placed in a pocket when the garment was to be worn and were removed from the pocket when the garment was to be washed. Unfortunately, because these chips are removable for washing, they may also be removed from the garments while in store. Of course, this greatly reduces the value of the product. In addition, the rigid casing of these switches caused a risk of injury to a wearer of a garment--especially when the garments are intended for children.